Written by John Dorney and directed by Ken Bentley.

Spoiler-free verdict: Michelle Gomez vs. Rufus Hound is an inherently good idea. There’s nothing more here, but let’s be real, we don’t need it.

Recommended pre-listening: A Spoonful of Mayhem

***

Divorced, Beheaded, Regenerated is a difficult story for me to review. I tend to like to talk things like character arcs, themes, pacing, structure, and most of those things are entirely irrelevant to a story like this. This story barely bothers with anything so prosaic as a plot, because it doesn’t need to. It’s a delivery mechanism for two great comedic presences to cut loose at each other, and on those terms, it certainly succeeds.

That’s not to say this script doesn’t do good things to elevate that. For a starter, it is genuinely funny, something which you kind of need to sell a comedy. There are endlessly quotable lines here, and wonderfully constructed scenes escalating the absurdity. In general, the premise is solid, giving the Monk and Missy both secrets to hide from each other and a historical backdrop to heighten the tension and add specificity and color. The story may not have anything to say about King Henry VIII or his reign, but it does get a lot of humor out of his legacy, from the infamous song to beheading gags and, quite pleasantly, a sincere presence from Catherine Parr. It also allows the most audacious conceit of all, that of Missy and the Monk playing chicken with getting married to each other. That alone is worth the price of admission.

The pacing of these various comedic beats is very solid, too. Going from a riot of a hook, the story steadily builds toward the delightful wedding setpiece, only to escalate itself from there to the song, and then call it a day at its peak. That’s all quite efficient, and makes for an engaging listen. The humor keeps the pace up in general, too. Though not every gag lands (Missy’s hypnosis trigger word left me scratching my head at the reference), they keep coming thick and fast enough for listeners to not mind, and Gomez and Hound are more than capable of elevating every joke to sublime.

There is a plot, of course, organized around disturbances to the web of time and creatures that like to vacuum-preserve historically important figures (which, in another story, could be a fascinating starting point: how do you decide who’s significant?), but that’s not what any listener is going to come away from in their memory. They’re going to remember Michelle Gomez and Rufus Hound delivering jokes. The jokes are good. The story, then, is a success.

7/10